Milo nodded once. “They’re right, of course. These ruins won’t go away or disappear in the few weeks or months until thaw sets in. Indeed, all things considered, why not just leave Dik here and you and the rest ride on back to the camp? Now that you’ve all been up here, you should have no trouble guiding the clans whenever the chiefs are ready to come up. Take the horses and the yurt and what you’ll need of the provender for your return journey and leave us the rest; with it and such game as we take, we’ll make out fine.
“You can load any spare horses with bales of scraped, part-cured winter-wolf pelts, property of both Linsees and Esmiths. But plan on biding here tonight and tomorrow. Dik has told you about the cats, and I want you all to meet them and converse with them, too.”
In the end, Dr. Harel chose to leave precipitately rather than sit through the thorough unmasking of him planned by Bedford. The defeated man announced his intention to repair to the project director in California and seek employment in the project designed to replicate a dwarf mammoth. Though the other professionals were disappointed not to witness the further humbling of the arrogant, brutal, hectoring bully, Bedford was relieved to see him go so quickly and easily.
But with Harel safely away and the initial work on the feethami project commenced, he felt it high time to himself commence a longish, circuitous trip to—among other things—try to use the newly undertaken project to shake or squeeze out a bit more funding from any contact that would sit still long enough.
This time, on his way to Japan, he went by way of Texas. There, at the complex housing the Steakley Foundation, he spoke with an old friend, Dr. Fleming Van Natta.
Van Natta poked with one stubby finger at a file in the stack atop his desk and nodded. “Yes, Jim, Dr. Harel has already applied to my people in Sacramento. They consider him to be arrogant and a bit surly, but quite knowledgeable in his field. His résumé is impressive, to understate, especially his Cyprian work experience. His apparently close contacts with Dr. Ivanov and some other Russian scientists in our field will be most helpful to our project, for we are going to need a fair amount of genetic material of the very sort that is most easily come by in Russia.”
Bedford nodded. “Yes, I am certain that certain of Dr. Harel’s skills and contacts will be very helpful indeed to you, Van; and that’s precisely why I mentioned him to start,” said Bedford, adding, “But there is at least one other side to him that I feel it only fair you should know, are you and the rest of your staff to work with him, to bottle yourselves up on an isolated island with him.
“To begin, he should have good contacts in Russia, because that’s where he was born and mostly where he was educated under his original name and identity of Vladimir Abramovich Markov. He was allowed to emigrate to Israel, and it was there that he had his name legally changed to Dov Harel. After his requisite time in their defense force, he went up to the university, studied under Dr. Goldman, then went with him into the island fauna thing on Cyprus and Crete.”
Van Natta bobbed his close-cropped head. “I’ve spoken with Sol Goldman on v-phone, while he was in Tel-Aviv, last month, and with Petronolis, in Athens, too; they remember Harel as a good—if somewhat slow and methodical—man, though they still don’t seem to have any idea why he abruptly left their project to seek and gain permission to emigrate to this country from Israel. He notes on his résumé ongoing differences with the directors of the project, but at least two of those selfsame directors don’t seem to have been aware of the existence of any differences at all between them and him.”
Bedford half smiled. “Van, I have reasons that, to me, are sufficient and logical to believe that Dr. Harel-cum-Markov left the Mediterranean area and came here because he was ordered to so do by his real employers: some little-known branch of the KGB.”
“The KGB?” demanded Van Natta with a look of utter incredulity. “But … Christ Almighty, Jim … why?”
Bedford shrugged. “You know how leaky is even our security here at this foundation, so you can imagine what a sieve many of the smaller, less well funded, less established projects are. The Russians had heard that the Stekowski group was about to begin a sabertooth replication project, of course, and they almost certainly have one or more similar projects underway or planned, and so they wanted to shoot down this one—especially since such notable types as Stekowski and Singh were involved in it—before it could hope to undercut their own.
“And there’s more … and far worse.” Then he went on to tell an encapsulated version of just how atrociously Harel had gone about forcing Drs. Stekowski and Baronian into backing him in the ill-omened Project latifrons.
Van Natta raised his bushy, blondish eyebrows and pushed back from his desk. “And you tried to wish a slimy monster like that off on me, Jim? What the hell kind of a friend do you call yourself man? Contacts or no contacts, I want no bastard like Harel in my group. What the hell were you thinking of to first sell the fucker and his vaunted accomplishments to me, then send him to our Sacramento office? I think I deserve an answer, Jim. I thought you were fond of all of us here at this foundation, just as we all are of you, still, for all that you left us for another project. What the hell did you intend to set us up for, planting this creature you knew to be a Russian agent among our new group in a fledgling project?”
“Take it easy, Van, just take it easy,” said Bedford soothingly. “Think harder, my friend. Had I had designs to set you up, as you say, I’d never have come here today and told you all that I have. Think, Van, would I?”
“Well … well, maybe not,” Van Natta agreed, albeit grudgingly. Then why did you do it, any of it?”
“Before I tell you that,” answered Bedford. “I have to know if you will agree to take on Harel, take him into your group, take him to your island facility. And also agree to deny him any use of a v-phone, radio or regular phone for any calls not thoroughly monitored by a Russian-speaker … one that he knows is monitoring his calls.”
“Why?” Van Natta asked in a tightly controlled voice.
Bedford shook his head. “Sorry, Van, no answers from me until I get the answers I want from you. That’s the way the stick floats, buddy.”
Van Natta changed his tack. “Just how much does John III know about all this? You did meet with him, I happen to know, before you came to my office today.”
Bedford grinning teasingly, maliciously, and said, “One hell of a lot more than you ever will, my sharp-eared friend, until … unless … ? Aw, c’mon, Van, give me the agreements I want, huh? You’re plainly drooling to know what my scheme is, and besides. Harel does have definite assets for your project, you know that.”
Van Natta shook his head stubbornly, his face mirroring his heritage—that of less than two hundred ill-armed men who, from the dubious advantage of a crumbling abode-walled mission, had laced a disciplined army of six thousand and had killed or wounded at least a quarter of them before being overcome. “From all you’ve said about him, Jim, the man could be really dangerous if thwarted, and I cannot expose my people to that. And that’s not to mention the possibilities of him deciding to try his stinking blackmail gimmick on my project, too. You know, I’ve got some key people who were born overseas and/or have relatives in foreign countries, also.”
Bedford frowned. “Van, the man is only dangerous to those he can scare with his size and his bluster, his tantrums. I know that for fact, believe me.”
But Van Natta still looked dubious and started to shake his head, so Bedford blurted, “You know he has three broken bones in his right hand, broken metacarpals?”